


Last evening down on Lover's Lane

by Lilliburlero



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Class Differences, M/M, Missing Scene, Songfic, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-16 18:39:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3498791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>' "But Toto said it was more or less handed to him on a plate." '</p><p>—<i>The Charioteer</i>, chapter 16.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last evening down on Lover's Lane

**Author's Note:**

  * For [disenchanted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/disenchanted/gifts).



> This one has [a soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX-b1Ksetcc), but you'll have to imagine Bunny's version (the stress pattern's slightly off, but would that stop Bunny? Would it heck as like).

‘You here to see the top-floor room, are you? You’re early. I can’t take you up now. I’m cooking tea.’ 

Toto bared his teeth in a failed attempt at insouciant ingratiation. Part of him would've liked to have taken the room. A short leash, he sensed, was just the ticket in this case. On the other hand, there _was_ something faintly ghoulish about it. He thought of old Ma Kavanagh, who tenanted the snug in his dad’s pub from opening time until her youngest son (six divine foot four of docker) came to steer her gently home, and her invariable screech at the punters hanging about for a seat— _jump in my grave as quick, would yis?_  Toto (whose parents had allowed him to sit the scholarship exam for the Grammar, and promptly rescinded their largesse when he passed it) had once said cheekily, _Like Laertes into Ophelia’s, Mrs Kavanagh?_ and she had cocked her tiny wizened head, fixed him with eyes like a rotten fish’s and replied, _I daresay you think you’re full of the grand high learning altogether, young Phelps, but he ended skivvered with his own poisoned sword and so will you if you don’t mind yourself_. He recalled himself to the pale, patchily-powdered, tired face in front of him. 

‘I’m sorry to have troubled you, no, I’m just dropping by on the off-chance Warren might be—’

‘I _think_ he’s in, go on up— _next_ time if you want the lodgers ring the _lodgers_ bell as is marked _hall_ , not the _basement_ bell what’s marked _ground_ —some folks haven’t eyes to see or the sense they’re born with—’ 

Toto scampered up the stairs before she could close the front door and plunge the stairwell into dangerous gloom. Bunny’s door was ajar; a thin L of light spilled onto the landing. He tapped. 

‘Ye—es—come in.’ Bunny was arranging things in the cocktail cabinet and half-whistling, half-humming a tune Toto couldn’t catch. He turned. ‘Toto, sweetie. What an unexpected pleasure. However did you get away?’ 

‘One of those Brass cock-ups you don’t enquire about for fear of gremlins.’ 

‘Delightful. Shut it behind you.’ 

‘Jesus, Bunny—’ he touched his own lip in sympathy. ‘Ouch. What—’ he gulped, thinking that perhaps he didn’t want to know, ‘happened?’ 

‘Oh, that. It’s nothing. Almost a week ago. What an age it's been since I saw you. Just this damn blackout.’ He gestured at the shrouded windows. ‘I bumped into something rather _upright_ and _stiff_.’  

Toto hadn’t reckoned on a long honeymoon, though he'd hoped for more than the fortnight he'd got. Exclusive rights were always temporary, but he had expected them to be terminated with fumblings at a party, not with the sort of encounter that ended in being knocked down. He must have smiled even more wanly than he thought he had, because Bunny held open his arms and said, ‘Oh, ducky. Come here.’  

The tentative kiss necessitated by the injury proved surprisingly stimulating. Sitting back on his heels, looking at Bunny sprawled in gorgeous, obscene disarray on one of the low Knoll chairs that the old dear must have starved and scrimped for actual _years_ to afford, Toto thought he might—might _just_ —be able to put up with the indiscretions. But after a moment of adjustment to his hair, collar and fly, Bunny was pert and boyish again. 

‘The sun’s over the yardarm, I think,’ Bunny said, investing the commonplace with the brittle, gritty quality of an acknowledged, deliberate irritant. Toto winced, wondering how long it would take to fade from his repertoire in the absence of the person it was adopted to annoy, then realised that it would simply persist—if their affair lasted—until Bunny had found a catchphrase that drove _him_ scatty. Bunny stretched, and with his hands folded behind his head, rose in a single, fluent movement—did he _practise?_ —and went to the cocktail cabinet.  

‘Actually, _Boo_ —’ Bunny dropped his arms. His shoulders stiffened and squared. _A very palpable hit_ , Toto thought. ‘I don’t awfully fancy anything strong, a cup of tea will do me.’ 

‘Oh,’ said Bunny, glancing with a sort of Cinquecento portrait effect over his shoulder, ‘of course, my dear. Whatever you please.’ 

‘I’ll make it, if you like.’ 

‘Goodness, no. Make yourself comfortable there and I’ll pop down to the kitchen. Only be a mo.’ He took the red-and-black teapot from a cupboard. 

Toto picked up his tunic from the floor, put it on and buttoned it. He selected the _Tatler & Bystander_ from the coffee table and perched on the edge of the chair, feeling as if he were in a clinic waiting-room. He glanced around and smiled, touched by the effort that Bunny put into a mere rented box. He’d re-done the whole colour-scheme to complement the possession he prized above the Riley, above the Mies chairs, above (certainly) any human being—the Irene Coles over the fireplace. It was bloody good, if stylistically belated, Toto admitted, the steely control of Braque allied to a pastoral sense of humour not elsewhere evident among the British Vorticists.  

He heard Bunny on the stairs, humming that half-identifiable tune, some jazz standard he knew, having absorbed it without attention in nightclubs; Toto didn’t care for music and he was glad Bunny hadn’t switched on the wireless.  Bunny came back in, carrying a small aluminium jug of milk. 

‘Oh, you’re admiring my Quaint Irene. Bit derivative, I suppose. But I fell in love with it. I bought it from her companion—fabulous old bitch, a thing of shreds and patches. She’d lost everything in some sort of speculation racket after Irene died—poor thing, too, too young—and had to flog the lot. She was squatting in a positive _shack_ behind the dunes on Tilling beach. She still had the most _fascinating_ pretensions, though—kept mumbling in pidgin Italian at me through toothless gums. I wish I’d met _her_ —Irene, I mean—’ 

‘I think it’s superb, actually. I shouldn’t be surprised if it appreciates quite a bit.’ 

‘Oh no, you awful boy. You should never buy a painting in hope of making money. It’s dreadfully dishonest, don’t you think?’ 

‘You’re likely to be let down, I suppose.’ 

Bunny laid out the tea-set on its gold japanned tray, singing odd snatches of the song between longer hummed passages. 

‘ _she is sorry to be delayed_ — _dream of love was gone_ — _under her velvet gown_ —’ 

Toto began to feel rather annoyed—Bunny was a godawful singer, for one thing—and the tune, in his uncertain rendering, lay maddeningly just beyond recognition. 

‘I’d say that kettle of yours is whistling madly.’ 

‘Mm— _willow across the way_ —’ 

He departed again, leaving Toto irascibly possessed by the same few bars. He lit a cigarette, disturbed by a situation that had somehow assumed an indefinably wrong shape. 

— _willow across the way_ — 

— _willow across the way_ — 

— _willow across the way_ — 

His memory finally engaged and turned with a clank—the words dripped— _and—the—mo_ — _ment—be_ — _fore—she—died—_ then gushed— _sheliftedupherlovelyheadandcried_ — He recognised too, with a nauseated lurch, exactly which syllable Bunny would have altered to his purpose. He stubbed out his cigarette, went to the door and flung it open. Bunny—who had been gaily and uninhibitedly warbling his renovated chorus as he mounted the stairs with the teapot—broke off and looked up. 

'Ooh, shut that door. The Germans are nothing to that old hag down there, she'll flay me alive—' 

‘Get in here and tell me just what the fucking hell you’ve gone and done now.’ 

Toto thought it would be like pulling teeth, but Bunny gave in with only a token show of innocence. He was an exhibitionist, and a queer sort of masochist with it—he did not want to be physically hurt (just the opposite), but revelled in others’ poor opinion like—Ma Kavanagh’s phrase returned— _like a pig in shite_. 

It was a farcical, grubby tale, like—give or take the sex of one or two of the players—the plot of a quota film. Toto knew he should try to persuade Bunny to set things straight, that he probably could, too. But he suddenly felt violently disinclined to inhabit Bunny’s banal, sordid world. He put down his teacup, stood up and said brutally, ‘How hilarious, dear. The things you think to get up to in your off-duty. All right, must dash. Be seeing you sometime.’ 

‘Oh, now you’re here you must stay the night. I’ll give you a lift back to Filton in the—’ Bunny’s face became that of a little boy, always lied to by cowardly adults, who had just worked out the truth for the first time. Toto wouldn’t forget it for a while.  

‘Please, no, _don’t_ —’ Bunny wailed, and tried to stand in his path. Toto sidestepped easily and finding he did not really need to administer a corroborating shove in the ribs to give him time to snatch cap and coat, did it anyway. He left the door open to leave himself light to get downstairs: he'd nearly made it before it clicked petulantly shut and he had to grope. 

He was patting the front door for the latch before he realised he had allowed a responsibility to devolve upon him. He despised Ralph Lanyon—hashing the opportunities handed to you on a golden plate and fed you with a silver spoon because you couldn’t keep it in your kecks long enough to finish school was bad enough, swanning about expecting people to lick your arse just because you didn’t whinge about your so-called hard luck was—slamming the front door behind him, Toto spat expressively on the stoop. But the pragmatism of the publican's son who must three times out of four bar the fellow he likes better supervened upon contempt: Ralph had unquestionably been wronged and he had to be told before things got out of hand.

Except Toto didn’t know Ralph’s new address, or if he was on the telephone. He supposed he would have to blue a sizeable moiety of the seven and ninepence in his pocket trying to find out—and then it would be all over Bridstow before last orders. On the other hand, he quailed slightly at the thought of marching up to the hospital to inform a man he’d never met that the boy friend he’d just thrown over who was also the former boy friend of one of his interlocutor’s two current boy friends had impersonated one of those boy friends to tell the other boy friend he was being two-timed. Or something like that. In any case, he was due back at Filton tomorrow morning, long before hospital visiting-hours. _Hospital_ , though—what a clot he was. Why hadn’t he thought of it straight away? He knew _just_ the bloke to pass on the gen. 

**Author's Note:**

> Bunny's chairs are Mies van der Rohe's _[Barcelona](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona_chair)_ design. (If I can't bring myself to rehabilitate his character, I can rehabilitate his taste.)
> 
> [Lucia, Irene](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapp_and_Lucia), I _am_ sorry, my darlings. You stray into Renaultverse as you do down on Lover's Lane: at your peril.


End file.
